I'm taking on a new journalism assignment as the North America reporter for Tnooz, a global media brand for the travel industry which will tackle developments, small and large, related to travel technology.Until we get under way, you can sign up on our website to be among the first to learn the details of this new venture.We also have Facebook and LinkedIn pages where you can check us out.Here's what's...
Some in the travel industry, namely Professional Travel Guide and Star Service Online, among others, advise consumers and travel agents, respectively, to disregard consumer-written hotel reviews like those on TripAdvisor and other review sites.These reviews, the argument goes, are unreliable, fraudulent and dangerous.But, these companies should know that the hotel industry itself pays very close attention...
getaroom.com, the online and offline hotel booking business founded by the founders of hotels.com, has partnered with Travelocity.getaroom.com currently only covers hotels in major markets, including New York, Orlando, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Anaheim and Miami.On the international front, getaroom.com also began pitching hotels in London.But,...
Bing introduced visual search in beta this afternoon and its prospects have me envisioning its applicability in travel.Speaking at the TechCrunch 50 conference today minutes prior to the visual-search launch, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft senior vice president, online audience, told attendees that Bing has to take some major steps, as opposed to modest innovations, if it wants to compete with the likes of...
My first blog post, Travel Metasearch: Frenzy or Finale? on March 12, took up the question of whether metasearch was "done." (By the way, it's not.)Priceline.com President and CEO Jeffery Boyd weighed in on the issue at the 2009 Citi Technology Conference last week, arguing that metasearch "didn't live up to the hype."Boyd has been a persistent metasearch critic, but Priceline long has participated...
When the moment of silence was observed this morning for the victims -- the dead and the living -- of Sept. 11, 2001, the sound of my Twitter application, TweetDeck, punctured the silence with bursts of tweets.At this moment, Remembering 9 and Sept11 were Trending Topics (or the most popular subjects) on Twitter.Twitter was nonexistent on Sept. 11. We've leapfrogged ahead.Everyone has their memories....
Travel Weekly's Michael Fabey reports that a new study, sponsored by ezRez Software, found that airlines took in some $10.25 billion in ancillary-services revenue in 2008, a 345 percent increase over 2007.In that year, 2008, airlines began to get their mojo working in their newly discovered drive for ancillary services."As airlines expand beyond their core product, the key is to determine how to best...
Alaska Airlines continues to challenge the "citizenship" of Virgin America and Virgin America last week reportedly asked the Dept. of Transportation to deny Alaska Airlines' petition and to terminate the case.With citizenship at issue, the dispute sort of reminds me of the birther movement, which questions whether President Obama actually was born in the U.S. Foreign ownership of airlines is an important...
Silver Lake, the private investment company that teamed with Texas Pacific Group to buy Sabre and Travelocity in 2007, just led an investment group which agreed to take a 65 percent stake in Skype for about $1.9 billion.eBay will retain a 35 percent equity position in Skype.When investors buy something like Skype, often there is no topic they like to expound upon more than the "synergies" they will...
Any smart company should monitor the social-media airwaves and at least listen to its critics.AT&T, for example, just recycled Seth the Blogger Guy in a YouTube video designed to quell criticism about its delayed MMS service and other iPhone service issues.In a similar vein, you have to give TripAdvisor some credit at least for reaching out to its critics and making a few tweaks to its hotel-review...